Many types of resources, such as physical properties/entities, virtual properties/entities, etc., are access controlled. Examples of physical properties/entities include, for example, a house, office, automobile, etc. Examples of virtual properties/entities include, for example, a bank account, investment account, website login ID, credit account, etc.
To manage access to physical properties/entities, proprietors often use physical locks to restrict access to authorized individuals. A proprietor grants an authorized individual access to a physical property/entity, such as a house, car, etc., by providing the authorized individual with a physical key to the lock of the house, car, etc. This may involve going to a lock smith to make a copy of the key in order to have a spare key to provide to the individual.
Further, once an individual has a key, disabling access to the property/entity may be difficult. For example, the individual may lose or refuse to return the key, or may, unknown to the proprietor, make a copy of the key. In such a situation, a proprietor may need to pay a lock smith to re-key the lock in order to eliminate access to an unauthorized possessor of a key.
Similar issues exist for managing access to virtual properties/entities, such as when a party responsible for a credit account wants to authorize another person to access the credit account. For example, a business owner may want to authorize an employee to access his business credit account to purchase supplies for the business. To do this, the business owner may need to apply for and obtain a credit card for the employee, or the business owner may provide his credit card to the employee for the employee to use to purchase the business supplies.
Taking measures such as those described above to enable an authorized individual to access a virtual property/entity, such as enabling the employee to access the business credit account, has inherent complexities and/or risks. Further, these complexities and/or risks increase, in some cases exponentially, as the number of authorized individuals increases.